In New Zealand we have sheep, a lot of sheep. We have sheep in farms, in the wild, on the streets and occasionally in houses. Sheep are everywhere. In fact, the only place we don't allow sheep is duck ponds, playgrounds and most schools as they are considered distracting in the classroom.
As you could imagine, its not exactly safe for sheep to be on the streets and many accidents are caused by this. Hundreds of thousands of sheep die each day on the street when they get hit by cars, busses, trains and even airplanes. Each year around 120 million sheep are killed, and a further 5 million die of natural causes.
Each year on the airports through out New Zealand, 5 million sheep will get sucked through jet engines. This causes billions of dollars worth of damage. To help reduce this damage we have two annual sheep hunting seasons where the military and police issue weapons such as rifles, hammers, chop sticks and grenades to everyone between the ages of 5 and 50, who then by law, have to spend at least an hour a day hunting, digging holes and burying sheep in them. Under the right conditions sheep hunting seasons are considered good family fun.
The greatest thing about sheep is that they bury their own dead. A sheep can smell another dead sheep from well over a mile away. When they do smell another dead sheep, about 20 sheep will come and push the dead sheep to the nearest patch of ground, then spend hours sometimes even days digging a hole to bury the dead sheep in.
As for the sheep that don't get killed in accidents they either get killed as food or put down for attacking people. Its not illegal to kill sheep in New Zealand but its not something that you should do in public, unless of course its sheep hunting season. You can get arrested if you kill a sheep in public. But most kiwis like having sheep around.
Sheep are generally quite animals with little need to make noise. Noisy sheep are the worst, in fact its social convention to kill any sheep that interrupts a conversation.
Sheep like to swim. On any sunny day if you go down to a beach or any river, you will find hundreds sometimes thousands of sheep that have come to go for a swim. Thats one of the reasons that sheep have so much wool, so they can stay warm if the water is cold.
Sheep train their young to swim as soon as they can, cause its one of their favourite things to do on a hot sunny day.
